Creme De La Creme

A degree in hospitality opens up a range of career options—from hotels to retail chains.

- Kamal Kant Pant

The hospitality industry is today a buzz with hype about the tremendous employment and travel opportunities that exist in this sector. The sector is attracting the curiosity of parents and guardians of students faced with the challenge of choosing a course for themselves. Let us begin by first understanding what is hospitality and then try to explore the prospects of the industry that revolve around it. The Cambridge English Dictionary describes hospitality as the act of being friendly and welcoming to guests and visitors, and also the food, drink, entertainment etc. that an organisation provides for guests or business partners. On a closer scrutiny, hospitality appears to be an attitude that anticipates the needs of others and places the needs of other people above one’s own. Hospitality as a profession is perhaps as old as human civilisation. And the future of this profession goes beyond anybody’s imagination.

This industry caters to the basic necessities of human beings, which are of food, shelter and entertainment. Any industry providing these needs has to sustain in both rain and shine but the prosperity of the people providing them in a situation of unprecedented growth in the economy could be anyone’s envy. Looking at the size of the industry currently, in terms of turnover, barring the oil industry, it is the largest one. And, globally, if we consider the employment it generates, there is no industry that comes even close to it. It is the backbone of many economies of the world and there is no country which does not wish to nurture it.

Traditionally, it’s not been an industry that attracted the best of talent in our country until perhaps recently due to the unsocial hours of work and the non-lucrative starting salaries that the industry offered. With both issues being addressed by the industry, the situation is changing for the better.